


pinkie

by thefudge



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love/Hate, Masturbation, Possessive Behavior, Sibling Incest, Talk of Suicide, The kids are not all right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 04:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Shiv glares at him. “Fuck you. You can’t take that back. You opened up to me, and now you’re slamming the door shut. Because, what? What are you afraid of?” Shiv/Kendall (set somewhere between 2x04 and 2x09)





	pinkie

**Author's Note:**

> i like to cry on halloween
> 
> (i was gonna finish my gerri/roman oneshot, but then this detour happened.)

How will we know?  
When the morning comes  
We are still human  
How will we know?

***

For a brief stint during their childhood, Connor had tried to convince them that she and Kendall were twins. She can't remember the exact details now, except that Connor was playing one of his social experiments (a couple of years back he asked the whole family to invest in something called TeleGemini, some kind of biotech company scamming anti-vaxxers into believing that twins could communicate telepathically and heal terminal illnesses via womb thoughts) but she remembers vividly how weirdly elated she and Ken felt for those three days when they actually believed there was a deeper, organic connection between them. Even if Ken was a head taller and was ashamed of his knobby knees, even if she was barely out of her nappies and couldn’t spell her name, even if it didn't make sense at all, Connor’s hamfisted lie became a kind of alternate universe where there really _ was _ an umbilical cord between them. In a way, the unbelievability made it more likely, more special. It's not as if they had been really close as kids or shared that many common interests, but they’d had that sense of belonging to each other exclusively. Like your own toothbrush in the glass. Their dad had harvested in them this need to possess without attachment, ownership that feels better than love. No wonder Roman had felt left out. He couldn't understand that kind of cold-blooded claim. 

Of course, now everything is pretty much normal, now they love each other without strings attached, they do. But that powerful, clinical belonging hasn't entirely washed out of their system. 

That's why she bolts up in bed in the middle of the night with a sudden dread, like feeling her fictional twin across the room. Like going back to a time of incredulity. 

Tom stirs from his sleep. He hears her panting loudly. “Babe, you okay?”

Shiv takes big gulps of air. Just a nightmare. There's no one else in the room. Where's Ken, though? Where is he tonight? Why is it important that she know? Why does it feel _ wrong _not to know? 

“Honey badger?” Tom asks again. 

“Yeah, I'm fine. I just - need some air to clear my head.”

“What were you dreaming of?” he asks as he watches her get up and shrug on a pair of yoga pants. 

“Oh, you know, the usual “will my family sink or swim” scenario, multiplied by eleven.”

“I’m your family too, you know, and I can swim,” Tom remarks, lovingly, absently. For all his emotional support he is as empty as one of those Inspirational Quotes apps that you can download and plagiarise. 

“I know.” 

But not really. There is family and there is _ family _. Those familiar animals she fed with her own milk. It doesn’t even make sense to her. She just knows that Ken is not okay. And he told her, he instructed her to take care of him. 

So she is going to do that.

She walks out without kissing Tom goodbye.

The fact that she finds him on the roof of his penthouse, the fact that she _ knew _to look, knew he’d trek up the tallest building and stare down it like a cold-blooded mountain climber, like in that wretched painting of the man on a precipice, staring at the mountain mist, his back to you, taunting you with his dickish solipsism - all this terrifies her. 

He doesn’t look like he’s about to jump.

On the contrary, he looks relaxed, calm, self-possessed, sitting on the parapet, one knee drawn up, cigarette dangling between fingers. 

Shiv feels sick. Clutches her stomach. Maybe he’s already made up his mind.

How many times has he stood like that, on the edge, lucid about his slide into the abyss? 

She takes a few steps towards him, clutching herself. A few strands of hair fall in her eyes, get wet. 

Ken looks up. Their eyes meet. Electric, vivisected blue and muddy, morgue grey. 

“Hey,” she croaks.

Ken regards her impassively. Almost like she’s not there. “Hey. What - what are you doing here?” 

“I, uh, I was in the neighborhood.”

He looks down at his watch. “It’s 3 AM.” 

Her mouth breaks into a sardonic smile. “Yeah, I don’t have a curfew.” 

“Something happen?” he asks, a little more alert. “Something wrong with Dad?”

Shiv can’t help rolling her eyes. “No, _ Jesus _ , not everything is about - _ no _, I’m not here to talk about him.”

One muscle flinches under his left eye. “You sure about that?” 

“Yeah, you know, I’m capable of caring about other things, other people. I wish you extended me the same fucking courtesy.”

There she goes, snapping at him, goading him on when she’s supposed to talk him off a ledge.

His lips twitch in one of his grim little martyr smiles. 

“Sorry,” she mutters, burying her nose in her coat. “I don’t want to pile more shit on you. What are you doing up here anyway?”

Ken leans back against open air, raising his foot on the parapet, taking a drag. 

“Clearing my head.”

That's what she told Tom too. 

She takes a step closer. “Mind if I join you?”

He doesn’t answer. He looks at the city’s scalp, the dark garden of blinking lights, a kind of Morse code that nobody gives a fuck about. 

Shiv sits down gingerly next to him. She doesn’t have a thing about heights, but it’s the lack of obstacles, the pure, unalloyed mountain air, more intense here than on scenic snow-capped peaks. She feels dizzy. She lifts her hand and he passes the cigarette without looking at her. His fingers are cold. She takes a drag.

“Remember when Connor tried to convince us we were twins and had like, magical fucking powers?” 

Her brother’s eyes shift from vacancy to mild confusion. “What?”

“When we were kids, you know....even though it was obvious that wasn’t true. He kept saying...” She feels stupid recounting it now, but she has no choice but to continue. “Kept putting us in different rooms and telling us to, like, think about the same thing.” 

Ken doesn’t reply for a few moments. 

_ I didn’t imagine it, okay? _ she wants to say. _ It happened. _

But then he hums softly under his breath. “No, wasn’t twins.”

Shiv laughs with relief because he’s talking. “Yes, it _ was _.”

“Nah. He said - he said we were Siamese twins. And Dad had to pay five million dollars for the surgery to split us apart.”

Shiv opens her mouth. Closes it. No...wait, did that really -? How could she forget _ that _? 

Ken gives her a sidelong glance. Smiles in understanding. “Yeah, I repressed it too. Thanks for reminding me.”

She laughs sadly. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Guess that memory is worse than I remembered.”

He chuckles. “Every memory is, kinda.” 

Shiv wants to contradict him, but she decides she wants to make him laugh more. “Wait, so that’s how he explained why I was smaller and younger than you.”

Ken nods, getting into it now. “Oh yeah. He said I fed on you. Took your life force, or some shit like that. Made you _ frail _.”

Shiv sputters, laughter spilling everywhere. “Why the fuck would he concoct something like that?”

Ken’s smile wavers. “I think he wanted me to think I’d damaged you. Sick fuck.”

“Amen.” She passes back the cigarette. Rubs her hands together. “You didn’t, though, right?”

“What?”

“Think you’d damaged me?”

Ken sizes her up. Her pink nose sticking out of her winter coat. All pink. Soft, baby soft.

“What are you doing here, Shiv?” he asks.

She blows steam from her mouth. “I, uh, I had a nightmare about you. Got this bad feeling in my gut. You know, twin telepathy.” 

His face in profile ripples. He’s struggling with some emotions at the bottom of whatever barrel he’s in. “I’m okay. You can go back to bed.” 

Shiv nods. “Sure. Let’s go back to bed. You can have the couch.”

Her brother shakes his head. “Go home, Shiv.”

_ I’m home, _ she wants to say, but that would sound corny as fuck. And she doesn’t really mean it. He’s not home for her. Nothing is. And she likes that, she likes being a nomad. Family is just being nomads together. 

“You told me to take care of you,” she mumbles, fighting back the moisture on her eyelids. 

Ken heaves a sigh. “Yeah, should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

Shiv glares at him. “Fuck you. You can’t take that back. You opened up to me, and now you’re slamming the door shut. Because, what? What are you afraid of?” 

Kendall swings his foot back on the roof. He gets up. He’s fluid when he wants to be. 

Shiv exhales. At least he’s not dangling anymore. She’s talked him off the ledge. 

“Go home,” he says quietly, and walks away. 

It’d be smart to walk past his front door and just keep going. It’d be smart to go back to Tom, sink down in his woolly embrace and just forget about her first and last name. Rhea was wrong about her. She knows she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. 

She finds her brother slumped at the kitchen island, nursing a beer, holding it between his hands like a dead baby bird he’s just strangled. 

“Jesus, Shiv - I’m tired - just leave me alone -”

“Tough shit. We’re gonna have this out right now. Whatever the fuck has been eating you inside, we are going to hash it out. We’ll take a fucking blood oath, I don’t care.” 

She drops her coat on a chair, rolls up her sleeves, pulls up her hair in a tight knot.

She walks around him. “Where do you keep your knives? I’m not kidding about the blood oath.”

She starts rattling his cupboards loudly. 

Ken is forced to intercede. He plants himself in front of her, grabs her arms.

“Hey - hey - _ stop _.”

Shiv holds two forks in a tight fist. 

“Drop them. Come on, drop them.” His fingers apply pressure. They aren’t so cold anymore. His pulse is a heavy hammer against her skin. He looks calm, but he’s not. 

“Where are your knives?” she asks again. 

“I, uh, put them away. Out of sight.”

It hits her a moment later why he did that. Her nostrils flare. She’s never been angrier in her goddamn life. He’s fucking pathetic. She punches him in the chest. “You self-destructive fucking twat. What, you’re gonna slit your wrists now? Gonna find you in the tub with fucking Enya playing in the background? What the fuck is wrong with you? _ Why _are you like this?”

She spits the words at him, bullet points. He’s not supposed to be the fuck-up, not really. No matter how many times she takes him to task for it, he’s supposed to have his shit together. Her and Roman are supposed to make fun of how much of a straight-laced corporate Boy Scout he really is. Even his drug habit - especially his drug habit - is just a way to maximize profits. It's not supposed to be a panacea. He's not supposed to be falling apart. This isn’t supposed to go this way. 

Ken wrestles with her small frame, tries to get her away from the cutlery, tries to get her away from him, but she clings to his shirt, nails digging into flesh, dragging his face closer, and he’s not doing a good job of extricating himself, he’s really not strong enough to fight the tide. 

“Look at me, fucking look at me. Whatever it is, whatever you _ did _, it’s not worse than what you’re going to do if I leave. Just tell me.”

Her brother opens his mouth. Almost like he’s trying to breathe. They’re both underwater. A kind of womb. Umbilical cord between them. 

She waits for something to come out. His breath falls against her face, her eyes, her lips. 

“Ken -”

“It happened at your wedding.” 

Shiv’s eyes widen. “What happened?” 

He looks at her with an ache, a hunger for disclosure. It’s almost voluptuous. He suddenly wants to tell her not just everything, but things beyond it too, things he’s only recently figured out about himself. He wants her to know what he doesn’t know. So she can sabotage him. So she can take his place. So she can take him in her arms. Make him forget. 

“You got married,” he says, a stop-gap in his throat. “That’s what happened.” 

And because she’s _ married _, because Tom is in the fucking picture, because she’s out of the loop, because their dad had to pay five million dollars for a fictional surgery that set them apart, he can’t fucking tell her. He can’t confide in her because she doesn’t belong to him exclusively anymore. She never did. 

But she could have. 

All of this could have been fucking different. 

His hand is suddenly on her jaw, gripping bone, tipping up. Angry, needy, ready to commit his next murder. 

“Why’d you go and do a stupid thing like that?” he asks, and presses his mouth against hers. 

In terms of sins, he’d choose this. 

He doesn’t expect her to taste like she looks. Pink. A Japanese taste, like flying over Tokyo, watching cherry blossoms sink in a pond, standing in his hotel room in the pink marble tub, watching his own skin turn pink, flayed alive. There’s pink in his stomach, there's a pink pit, he shudders. He covers her mouth, doesn’t let her speak. Fuck, it feels good. It feels so good to not think about other bad things, except this one pink, bad thing. 

Shiv breaks away, angles her head so that his mouth falls on her ear. She breathes hard, but she doesn’t push him off. 

“Um - yeah -” she says stupidly, because this is the first time in God knows how much time since a kiss has felt like a thing of urgency, a fire hazard. A real fucking thing. 

Kendall nuzzles the shell of her ear, lips against her jaw. “Please...just...please…”

_ Take care of me. _

Shiv has to grip the kitchen island. She lets him warm the side of her neck with his mouth, lets his lips ghost there as she tips her throat back, as she’s still deciding what’s about to happen, what _ can _ happen, what has happened already. They hugged like this before, but this is not a hug. This is his mouth reaching back to her mouth and these are her hands on the side of his head, cradling him, fastening him to her, as their lips crest over each other, like the seams at the back of a dress, two halves pinning the fabric together, tongues meeting furtively, shy licks, animal licks, then the need for more saliva, the need to burrow _ inside _ each other’s warmth, the rapid, shockingly rapid growing need to kiss away this very kiss, so they kiss, they kiss noisily, humming, moaning their own inability to stop. They lose sight of themselves, lack any formal grace, as he sinks his hand in her hair and yanks her knot without caring about whether in this moment it'll hurt, and her hair comes undone, buttery between his knuckles, and she helps him lift her up on the counter without missing a beat as his fingers drum up and down her spine, over the shirt, then under the shirt, feeling hot bare skin and the hostile bite of bra and fuck - this is not - okay, they have to stop - because this is some really dumb, destructive shit, this is another form of suicide - but he’s pawing at her shirt, palming her breast under her bra, and she groans and drags her leg against his waist, rubs against him like a greedy cat - this is really, really bad - he rolls her nipple under his thumb - tastes the back of her throat - a scream - no, something softer - _ please, maybe we should stop _ , this is what happens when you wake up in the middle of the night with a thirst and you don’t stop at the first glass - and he is going to fuck her, fill her up, he is going to pour every last fucking thing inside her, he is going to dump that dead body inside her, she is going to have to live with it now, with _ him _ , he will fuck her through it, make her cum around his guilt-ridden cock, because they have a claim on each other and it’s about fucking time he collected, because he’s been neglectful, hasn’t he - oh she’s Daddy’s special girl, isn’t she, she wants to be the next in line, _ here _, this is what you have to do, this is what you have to take, this is all my fucking baggage, keep it in the family, why the fuck did you get married - and it’s at this point, when his cock is lined up to her entrance and he has no fucking clue how he dragged her yoga pants down to her ankles and unzipped himself, it’s at this point that he feels her soaked cunt with his fingers and groans against her mouth and says, out loud, “Pinkie” - and they both freeze.

Their dad is in the room with them suddenly.

_ Pinkie. _

Shiv stares, incredulous, eyes made of glass. She opens her mouth. Vulnerable, hurt, rubbing herself against his cock. But mostly, betrayed.

_ Why did you have to call me that? _

It's like Siamese twins, making each other frail. 

He slides away from her reluctantly, tucks his hard cock back in his underwear. 

Shiv puts her face in her hands. Shoulders shaking.

Ken can’t take it. 

“Hey - it’s okay -”

She jumps down from the counter and runs, stumbles towards the bathroom.

Shiv dry heaves in the sink, disgusted because nothing will come out, because she’s not disgusted. She splashes ice-cold water on her pink face.

And then, before she can change her mind, she slips her hand down to her clit and rubs and flicks and thinks about him fucking her until she comes with a strangled cry.

Her brother strokes himself quickly in the other room, eyes squeezed shut, back against the counter. His fingers still smell of her. He comes with a syllable of her name on his lips. It’s the best high he’s ever had. 

She comes out of the bathroom eventually. Ken is sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, head between his legs. 

Shiv shrugs on her coat methodically, one sleeve at a time. 

Both of them are recovering from some kind of coma, that’s how it feels, finding out who’s president and how old you are now, whether anyone else is still alive. 

“Don’t kill yourself tonight, okay?” she says, wry and broken. 

Ken chuckles. They’re both going to cry when they’re alone, but it’s going to be a kind of catharsis. Because even if they fucked it up, he didn’t slam the door in her face, did he? He almost told her. In fact, he _ did _. He’s never told anyone as much as he told her in that moment. That’s something. 

_ I didn’t know I loved you like that. So much, _ he thinks.

_ Neither did I _, she responds. 

And they don’t have to be twins to read each other's minds. 

She slips back between the covers. Meets Tom’s dry embrace.

“Mm, everything okay, honey?” 

Shiv wipes her cheek, nestles her head against his chest. 

“Yeah, you know. Family.” 


End file.
